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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Picking Nits about Domestic Violence

I saw this post over at Clarissa's while I was chilling at a hotel waiting to go to a fetish party for Halloween a few nights ago (more on that later) but decided to wait until I got back to say something.

First off you should go read the post because I'm talking about something she says near the end of it.

I really don’t want this post to turn into “If the victim were a woman, the reaction would have been different.” No, it wouldn’t. No matter who the victim is, people who are battered at home are routinely dismissed. Domestic violence is an issue people love to dismiss. By ridiculing victims of domestic abuse we create an emotional distance from them. It is as if we said to ourselves, “This is not something that could happen to me. I’m nothing like these crazy, cupcake-hurling folks.”

Not so fast.

You see what I think people are getting at when they say, "If the victim were a woman, the reaction would have been different." is that indeed people's attitudes can change drastically when talking about female against male violence versus male against female violence.

Yes overall there is a problem with the general dismissal of all victims of domestic violence but there is a big difference between that and trying to say that people's reactions don't change when talking about m vs f instead of f vs m. I've even had this conversation with people about a woman abusing a man and I made the "if he was abusing her..." comment to which people actually did change their reaction. And not just change their reaction but literally say, "but that's different".

Now at the same time its bearing in mind that the change won't always happen in that direction. Just as there are people who will say "but that's different" when shifting from f vs m to m vs f there are those who will do the same in reverse.

Not trying to attack you Clarissa just saying that to a lot of people the reaction really would be different.

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About Me

Who am I you ask? The name's Danny and I'm just a pro-MRA guy that's trying to build his own masculinity and his own place in this world and I'm sharing my experiences in hopes that other people will realize that there is no one "right" way to be a man or to be masculine. Oh but I also enjoy music, anime, video games, technology in general, and lots of other things too so they will be coming along for the ride. If you need to get up with me just drop a line at dannybois-dot-corner-at-gmail.com.